CEO Reputations Revealed

October 30, 2014

CEO Reputations Revealed

I thought I would have some fun with Google’s Autocomplete. Autocomplete is defined as search queries that are a reflection of the search activity of users and the content of web pages. When you type in a word, the google search box anticipates what you are looking for and tries to assist you. So I thought it might be interesting to see what the predicted queries were for searches like CEOs should_____ or CEOs are _____. And I decided to follow that up with Female CEOs are ____ or Women executives are _____ and so on. I chose the latter because try as I did, not alot came up when I typed in Women CEOs or Female CEOs so I switched to female executives. Sorry state of affairs.

Glimpses of CEO reputation through Autocomplete were revealing and not pretty. As you see below, CEO reputation Autocompletes are not complimentary. I knew that compensation would come up but CEOs are sociopaths….I don’t think so! And I was surprised to see CEOs associated with complaining because I rarely come across that perception. CEOs as born dreamers, what’s that all about?

Of course, I was curious to see what would surface when searching women CEOs or female executives using Autocomplete. Glad to see female CEOs highly correlated with Fortune 500 companies and the city of Chicago (are there more female CEOs in Chicago than elsewhere?). But typically, we get our auto-fill of associations with underwear (huh?), wardrobes and hairstyles. Not exactly empowering but typical. Also noted that the CEO of Yahoo came up and to those inquirers, the answer is Marissa Mayer. And there is no female CEO of Facebook — Sheryl Sandberg is the COO although she has a high profile.

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Leslie Gaines-Ross

lesliegainesross@gmail.com

As Weber Shandwick’s Chief Reputation Strategist, I focus on the ever changing world of reputation. For the past 25 years, I have relentlessly observed, researched and commented on the rise and fall of reputations.